


Wild Animal, Winter

by Anonymous



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Episode: s03e21 Same As It Never Was, Gen, Nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:25:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2692937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Raph takes a deep breath, then another one for good measure. It doesn’t help, but the screaming did, and he’s a little calmer as he limps for the bike and drags it upright. It seems heavier than it did a minute ago.</i> SAINW!Raph going out to the middle of nowhere and getting mad about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Animal, Winter

Raph runs out of gas somewhere in Ohio. The motorcycle whines to a stop, coughs, and goes still in the dirty slush on the side of the road. He cusses marvelously, turns the key a few times to some feeble sputtering, then swings off the bike and kicks it as hard as he can. Screams and cusses as pain bursts in his foot — starts to scream at the bike, at the empty road, at the treeline just on the other side of the ditch, but it doesn’t do anything more satisfying than scare some birds into flight, and even that he can’t be sure is his fault.

Once Raph has shouted himself hoarse, he stands very still, panting like a wounded bull. In one last-ditch surge of anger, he grabs the fallen bike and hoists it up, just to throw it as far as he can — it tumbles over and skids to a stop in the middle of the road, so anticlimactic that it makes him laugh. One of the side mirrors lies skewed on the road, not even broken, just snapped off at the joint; it reflects the neutral gray sky, looks almost like there’s no reflection on it at all.

Raph takes a deep breath, then another one for good measure. It doesn’t help, but the screaming did, and he’s a little calmer as he limps for the bike and drags it upright. It seems heavier than it did a minute ago. He drags it to the side of the road, dumps it in the ditch, which is slightly more satisfying than hurling it into the middle of the road, and takes a moment to really look at where he’s ended up.

Trees rise on both sides of him, thin enough that he can see fifty yards into them; the sky is gray, but not hanging low or bleached, so he probably won’t have to worry about snow until nightfall at the earliest; the road is one that doesn’t see much use, an old and winding thing with potholes and faded yellow lines. The slush of the road crunches under his feet, but the snow in the ditch is mostly untouched, bird footprints pecking along it at irregular intervals. To cross the ditch, he’ll have to wade through it, and him with only his stolen sweatpants and tennis shoes to protect him — “Never forget that your actions have consequences,” Raph says, too bitter and hateful to be anywhere close to Splinter’s voice, and it’s not a comfort at all, not when the consequences are him freezing to death like a fucking idiot in The Middle of Nowhere, Ohio.

Quiet though the road is, he can’t keep diddling around, so Raph takes a deep breath, tests his weight on his throbbing foot, then plows ahead, forcing his way across the ditch. The snow goes up to his chest at the deepest point, and Raph starts cussing again, slashing at the snow — he ends up having to haul himself gracelessly out on the other side, crawling on his stomach and shimmying until he can straighten up again. The snow on the other side isn’t too deep, just a couple inches — deep enough for it to overflow into his shoes and clump under the hem of his pants.

He walks.

As he walks, the trees close in, and so too does his mood. He has no plan, isn’t even aware if he’s going north or south or off the edge of the god damn planet, succumbing to his misery and the cold, running over every mistake he’s made, every horrible day since Donnie disappeared, every failure, the hot splash of blood on his chest, Leo. Sensei’s last stand, no time for goodbyes, no peaceful drifting away. Leo, dragging him and Mikey down sewer pipes that should’ve been familiar. Leo, bent over Mikey, Leo digging, Leo covered in dirt, Mikey dazed and pale, Leo, Leo, Leo — Raph roars, raw and vicious, and punches the nearest thing to him — a tree, considerably older than him and sturdier.

It’s more a shock than anything — a shudder through his whole body, a tingling like he struck his funny bone, and then a massive clump of snow falls with a thick crackling, like the tree’s coughed something up. He feels like a gong that’s just been struck, vibrating all the way through, clear of mind and body and soul, and it’s in that moment that he spots the shack.

To call it a shack is doing it too much a service, but it has four walls and a roof and a tiny, cramped door, and it’s the most beautiful thing Raph’s ever seen. He thought he’d have to make an igloo or find a cave or just die like the idiot he is in the snow. Maybe now he can die like the idiot he is somewhere warmer. Nursing his hand, he hurries toward it, checking for any other sign of life as he goes — any other houses, any fences, anything at all, but there’s nothing as far as he can see, which is less far than he’d like with the dead trees like gray impassive soldiers on all sides. He tries the door, finds it locked — but before he can bother to kick the door open, the lock is breaking under his fumbling grip and the door swings open.

There’s a rotted pile of wood in one corner and a rusted stove so old and battered that it would probably fall apart just as easily as the lock — other than that and a hoard of cobwebs and the stray remains of some animal nests, the one-room shack is empty, which is fine by Raph. More room for him.

Raph shuts the door behind him and sits by the wood, kisses his raw knuckles. Realizes only in the wind-free shelter of the shack that his cheeks are frozen from tears.

He scrubs at his face until it is dry.

This will do.


End file.
